The Bush administration is
set to resume cooperation with Peru in a program that shoots suspected
drug-running planes out of the sky. That program was abruptly suspended
nearly two years ago when Peruvian Air Force pilots working with CIA spotters
shot down a private plane carrying US missionaries. In the August
20, 2001 incident, 35-year-old Veronica Bowers (http://www.drcnet.org/wol/183.html#coca)
was killed and her husband wounded.

US officials are worried
coca cultivation is on the rise in Peru. "We are seeing a large increase
in the number of people clearing out old coca fields, and getting back
into it," an unidentified "senior US official in Peru who is familiar with
antinarcotics efforts there" told Knight-Ridder News Service. The
increase in Peruvian cultivation is tied to intense pressure on growers
in neighboring Colombia, the failure of alternative development programs
in Peru's coca-growing regions, and the inability of the Peruvian state
to enforce the ban on illicit coca crops.

The US-backed air surveillance
and shooting down of unidentified planes was halted abruptly after Bowers
and her daughter were killed, and investigations into the incident found
that the US CIA employees involved did not have sufficient Spanish fluency
to communicate with their Peruvian partners. But Peruvian pilots
and US anti-drug employees have received new training, including simulator
training in Oklahoma City, and the flights should be back in the air before
year's end.

"We have detected unregistered
flights that we cannot confirm are drug flights, but many probably are,"
said Peruvian drug czar Nils Ericsson. [Ed: Let's hope they
can figure that out before they shoot down more innocent civilians or submit
more suspected airborne traffickers to extrajudicial execution.]

The killing zone also includes
Brazil, which has intercepted 88 drug flights since its new Amazon regional
radar system went into operation, and Colombia, which is also expected
to resume shootdown flights with US cooperation before the new year.

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